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MEMBER DIARY

Courage, Not Scorecards

Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth are outstanding organizations. If you look at scorecards, theirs represent the purest of some very impure cards. HAFA and CFG should be commended for their efforts to hold politicians feet to the fire, but we need an added element. We need to score unanimous consent requests.

The House, today, passed a massive spending bill. The Senate will pass it tomorrow. HAFA and CFG have announced they will be scoring in opposition. They should.

Now, as you suspect, the true conservatives in the House lined up and voted against it. The same will happen in the Senate tomorrow. They are voting the way they should. What’s the problem then? Our conservative heroes are doing the right thing, right? Wrong!

Before both bodies vote, there are procedural moves which can be made by members to slow down a massive package like this and perhaps expose the bad deeds that are about to take place. The American people have had little if any time to read the legislation and as Senator McCain pointed out today, no member of Congress has had an opportunity to read it. (See, McCain Slams Omnibus Spending Bill). Don’t expect for any of those procedural moves to be made.

In the Senate, they will need unanimous consent to move the package through the process. Where are the conservative heroes going to be then? The same place they’ve been in the past — hiding behind two very good score cards. Instead of objecting and displaying courage and the willingness to fight the establishment when it matters, they will be smelling jet fumes and trying to get out of Washington to come home and tell us how hard they are fighting. The truth is, they’re fighting, but not when it matters.

HAFA and CFG need to add another element to scorecards. When they’re scoring a vote like the ominibus, which continues us down the path to bankruptcy, spending at a minimum $20 billion more than we spent last year, no member should get credit for fighting and voting “right,” unless they’ve used every procedural process possible to save America. It is time for our conservative leaders to show us some courage, not just a scorecard.